The Arizona sentinel., 1887-07-02
BLUES TURTLE.

| that ran through the stump lot lew
 rods back from his fathers house. He
 wore as a protection against dirt a
 blue gingham over-garment, made aft
 CT the fashion of mans shirt, and
 reaching to his knees. He could walk
 when he had it on, but if he wished tc
 make gigantic strides, he must needs
 hold the skirt of it up.
 Sometimes, as he rambled, he jumped over stump, and sometimes he threw sticks into the stream; and once and finally he lay down at full length upon an overhanging grassy bank. where the stream was deep still, and with his face over the edge looked down into the water.
 As he lay, wondering if a fish wouldn't Hook comipaT' if it had ears like hounds, and if, in such a case, it would be likely to step on it's ears and stumble, movement in the wa ter arrested his attention, and, after a moment of wide-eyed gazing, he reached down and pulled out into the dry light of day huge snapping-tur- l tie.
 With the same motion that drew the turtle from the water he threw it several feet from him out on the green sward. and with his heart beating faster than it's wont he rose and watched it ''perform." It had fallen upon it's back, and when it had rallied its astonished and scattered wits it thrust out his head and it's rough white neck, and placing its head on the ground. turned itself over.
 It seemed to Bic that the turtle looked at him and defied him. It needed no challenge to make him afraid of it; he was afraid already. But he took long stick and poked it; and it hissed and spat like an angry cat, and snapped fiercely at the stick, and raised itself up from the ground on it's feet and hissed more and worse, he whispered, in his terrified heart; "Landy! I'll keep away from Vou!"
 Bic was not intimately acquainted with turtles, and it occurred to him. as he was poking at this one, that for aught he knew it might when it's patience was gone, fly at him and scratch his eyes out; and he thence forth confined his operations to very gently preventing it from returning to the water.
 He had heard his grandmother tell of cooking a mortal great turkle" that his grandfather caught when the family twas moving in a wagon out to Indianny," and he recalled mouth watering statements relative to the de- liciousness of the said turkle "and of other turkles." He remembered hear ing too that man who lived over on the saw-mill road had put turtle into his swill barrel, where it had fattened until it was just right to eat; and Bic said to himself that he would put his turtle into the family swill barrel, and have it for dinner on his birthday.
 As he sat contentedly on a stump keeping guard he pictured to himself his turtle grown amazingly delicious and too large to live longer in the swill barrel, and then far more deli cious and too big to be comfortable in the mill-pond; and so did his imagina- ton run riot that he was about to behold it absolutely enshrouded in de- liciousness, and as large as the sandy lot, when he was confronted by dis nal problem-how to get the creature home.
 It was useless to call for his mother, for she was across the road from the house picking berries. If he left the turtle and went for help, it was certain to go back into the creek; and as far as carrying it home by the tail, not he not while it had head!
 After mature deliveration, he made moose in the end of a cord and ap- preached the turtle from behind and tried to lasso its tail, intending to march triumphantly home with the beast in tow; but this was tail that loved liberty. and it refused to be las soed. At last grown desperate. he re- solved to drive two stakes into the ground, about eight inches apart, and 'tshoo" the turtle toward them until the front of its shell was between them, and then drive two more sticks close behind it, and go and get his mother and the grain shovel and bushel basket
 As he went in search of the first stake to be driven in this deep plot, he noted, to his great annoyance, the ap- proach of his fathers spotted calf The calf in its infancy had licked the fill ing out of a custard pie that his mother had made for him and set out | on a bench to cool, and it had ran | away when he was leading it by a rope, and dragged him through three | distinct mud puddles and five ripe eu- cumbers; and when he resolved. as he did resolve, that if his life were spared | he would protect the calf from the turtle, it was not that he loved the calf | more, but that he loved the turtle less.
 But argument was lost upon the cali, ]